My first visit to Wembley was the "Merseyside Cup Final". The police watched and laughed as many enterprising supporters already inside tied scarves together and used them to haul their mates up and in through the high windows at the back of the stands there.Originally Posted by TheCurly
Passion, you see.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
The trouble with the words "the fans", is that it ascribes a large number of individuals to one collective entity. Saying "the Liverpool fans were pushing" seems to accuse all of them of culpability, which cannot be right.
Also in other instances, where I hear "Arsenal fans blah blah blah" attributes a single opinion or action onto thousands of people which I find reductive and innacurate.
I blame Monty.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
Good call, r
That is absolutely a fair point that I accept unreservedly. However, what bothers me is that you will struggle to find any mention whatsoever of any Liverpool supporters being culpable either legally or morally throughout this entire charade. This seems genuinely bizarre to me. It has simply become an unsayable thing.
Let's assume that there was some pushing going on, on the basis that a crush at one end requires force applied at the other. There will never be evidence to convict anyone of it though, so what's the point in attributing collective guilt, beyond having a general pop at scousers? The only way to get closure on this thing and to put it behind us is to string a few people up who can be found to be guilty and in this case it looks like they are going to be some coppers.
You don't like coppers anyway, ISTR, so defending them here seems as odd as Jorge suddenly singing the praises of British justice.
You're right. I don't much like coppers - although on balance I prefer them to scousers.
However, I do have an issue with the way the police are being blamed solely, as though their failures occurred in a vacuum or as a result of some force of nature over which no other humans had control. I don't like that. It's an easy answer and it's a lie.
Yes, it does rather sound as though these supporters were just in the general area, minding their own business before the police rounded them all up and forced them into an enclosure which was too small for them all, just so they would inevitably crush each other to death. You know, just for a laugh.
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
That's the point though. A crowd is a force of nature.
If you wanted to asphyxiate someone, by yourself, you'd really have to put your back into it. To be part of a crowd that crushes people to death you merely have to keep moving forward a bit. Once you're a little further in you can't really get much further, but the bloke behind the bloke behind the bloke behind can squash up a bit, and does, and then you start getting pushed. You can't break that down to individual responsibility, or even group responsibility, unless the people at the back who are trying to get further forward are aware of the issues they're creating near the front. If you're the policeman doing crowd control, it's your responsibility to make sure they know and get them out.
From a professional point of view, I agree.
But exactly the same accountability concerns affect the authorities too. As you say, you can't break that down to individual responsibility, or even group responsibility.
But isn't that precisely what has happened here? Aren't we merely hunting, rather mean-spiritedly, in my view, for someone to blame, rather than accepting there were faults on all sides, tragic concatenation of circumstances and events, must do better in the future and so on?
"Plenty of strikers can score goals," he said, gesturing to the famous old stands casting shadows around us.
"But a lot have found it difficult wearing the number 9 shirt for The Arsenal."
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